A Short

History of
BIG
DATA
 1944
Fremont
Rider, Wesleyan
University

2
Librarian, publishes
The Scholar and the
X Future of the
EVERY Research Library.
He estimates that

16 years American university

libraries were
doubling in size every
sixteen
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data years.
by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 1967
The “information explosion”
Automatic noted in recent years makes it
Data essential that storage
requirements for all information
Compression
be kept to a minimum. A fully
automatic and rapid three-part
compressor which can be used
published by with “any” body of information to
B. A. Marron & greatly reduce slow external
Paul de Maine storage requirements and to
increase the rate of information
from the Abstract transmission through a
computer is described in this
paper.
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 1980
“I believe that large
amounts of data are
being retained because
users have no way of
identifying obsolete
data; the penalties for
storing obsolete data
are less apparent than I.A. Tjomsland gives
are the penalties for the talk titled
discarding potentially “Where Do We Go
useful data.” From Here?”

Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 1996
Digital storage
becomes more
cost-effective
VS for storing
data than
paper

Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 1997
The term big data is used for
the first time in publication
“Application-controlled demand paging for out-of-
core visualization”

Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 1998
400%

Data Traffic
GROWTH RATE OF INTERNET

200%

Voice Traffic
0%

1997 1998 1999 2000

by

2002
“The Size and Growth
Rate of the Internet.”

Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 1999
Study finds that in 1999
the world produced

X 250
≈ 1.5
exabytes of unique
information
exabytes of unique
information
For every man, woman, and child

Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 2001
Doug
Volume Laney, an
Velocity analyst with
the Meta
Variety Group, coins
the 3
“3D Data V’s
Management:
Controlling Data
Volume, Velocity, and
Variety.”
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 2002

In 2002, digital
information storage
surpassed non-digital
for the first time
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 Database management
is a core competency
of Web 2.0
companies, so much
so that we have
sometimes referred to
these applications as
‘infoware’ rather than Tim O’Reilly -
merely software.” “What is Web 2.0”
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 2011

1986 2007

+ 25% per year

99.2% of all 94% of storage
storage capacity
was analog
VS capacity was
digital

“The World’s Technological Capacity to

Store, Communicate, and Compute Information”
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 2012
Big Data is defined in “Critical Questions for Big Data” as
a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon that
rests on the interplay of:

1. Technology: maximizing computation power and

algorithmic accuracy to gather, analyze, link, and
compare large data sets
2. Analysis: drawing on large data sets to identify
patterns in order to make economic, social, technical,
and legal claims.
3. Mythology: the widespread belief that large data sets
offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that
can generate insights that were previously impossible,
with the aura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy.
Facts taken from A Very Short History Of Big Data by Gil Press – Forbes.com
 2013
Where Are Companies Professionals Who
Analyze Big Data
Focusing Big Data
SALES 15.2%
MARKETING 15%
CUSTOMER SERVICE 13.3%
R&D 11.3%
IT 11.1%
MANUFACTURING 8.3%
FINANCE 7.7% In an IT Function
LOGISTICS 6.7%
In Business Functions That
HR 5%
Use the Data
In a Separate Big Data Group

Facts taken from TATA Consultancy Services

2013
Introducing Observato™
 Independent Data Archive
 Complete Transaction Record
 Multi-system Data Tracking/History
 Fully Compliant
 Data Reporting
 Easy to Navigate UI
Helping businesses manage their big
data, in a big way.
This SlideShare is a visual presentation of the article “A
Very Short History of Big Data” by Gil Press, taken from
Forbes.com.

Additional sources are cited within the text.

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